Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg’s critical look at the far right throughout Europe reveals a prehistory and politics more complex than the stereotypes suggest and warns of the challenges it poses to the EU’s liberal-democratic order. These movements are determined to gain power through legitimate electoral means, and they are succeeding.

This book examines the reasons behind the variation in the electoral fortunes of the West European parties of the extreme Right in the period since the late 1970s. It proposes a number of different explanations as to why certain parties of the extreme Right have performed better than others at the polls and it investigates each of these different explanations systematically and in depth.

"The Far Right in Europe: An Encyclopedia brings together up-to-date information on all the major - and many minor - European far right parties, tracing their historical roots, describing their policies, personalities and activities, and exploring the links between them. Longer contextual essays, written by a team of experts, debate regional and ideological traditions. Scholarly but accessible, there is no better introduction to the alarmingly vigorous contemporary tradition of far right groups in Europe."--BOOK JACKET.

As the French Presidential elections clearly demonstrated in the Spring of 2002, the popularity of far right parties is gaining ever more strength. From the National Front in France to the British National Party, anti-immigration, anti-European Union platforms are winning more voters. The numbers alone are striking: the National Front in France received nearly eighteen percent of the nationwide vote in 2002 Presidential run-off between Chirac and Le Pen; the Swiss People's Party received 23 percent of the popular vote in a 1999 election; and Jorg Haider's Austrian Freedom Party moved from near collapse to second place in the 1999 election. The essays in Shadows Over Europe explore this growing presence of extreme right political parties in governments throughout Europe. These parties can no longer be dismissed as anomalous or temporary. It is clear that they have established an enduring presence in European politics. The contributors to this volume explore the origins of this trend, why they have gained such support, and where these parties might be headed. They explore the policy orientations of these parties and their role in electoral politics across the continent. Together, these essays provide a significant contribution toward understanding the rise and impact of the far right in Europe.

In recent years the revival of the far right and anti-Semitic, racist and fascist organizations has posed a significant threat throughout Europe. This title provides a broad geographical overview of the dominant strands within the contemporary radical right in both Western and Eastern Europe.

This book is a concise critical introduction to one of the most emergent themes in late twentieth-century history, politics and society and looks at how extremist and nationalist popular fronts have grown under the influence of modern-day issues.

The first comprehensive and truly pan-European study of populist radical right parties in Europe.